The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which manages an endowment fund worth nearly $40 billion, has invested $36 billion to date in projects to fight malaria and tuberculosis and other global health and education initiatives. Bill Gates co-founded Microsoftmsft in 1982 and has pledged to donate most of his fortune to charity. Billionaire Berkshire Hathaway chairman Warren Buffett also contributes to the foundation.

Other tech luminaries on the list include Richard Garwin, a physicist who helped design the first hydrogen bomb. Garwin also headed up Applied Research at the IBMibmThomas J. Watson Research Center and is an IBM Fellow emeritus. He won the National Medal of Science in 2002.

Mathematician Margaret Hamilton, who lead the development of on-board flight software for NASA’s Apollo space effort, will also be honored.

Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, the pioneering software programmer, will be honored posthumously. Hopper wrote the first software compiler and contributed much to the creation of the COBOL programming language, which helped drive the computer age.

]]>http://fortune.com/2016/11/17/president-obama-bill-melinda-gates/feed/0Bill Gates, Melinda GatesbarbaraadarrowMelinda Gates Goes Public (Fortune, 2008)http://fortune.com/2016/03/16/melinda-gates-fortune-classic/
http://fortune.com/2016/03/16/melinda-gates-fortune-classic/#respondWed, 16 Mar 2016 15:30:04 +0000http://fortune.com/?p=1586447]]>Editor’s Note: This Fortune classic, from our January 2008 issue, is the first solo profile that Melinda Gates ever agreed to do. The story covers the marvelous gamut of Melinda's extraordinary life: meeting and marrying Bill Gates, becoming the essential half of what has turned out to be the world’s premier philanthropic partnership, and dramatically changing her husband's ideas about what to do with his money. Another rich guy, Warren Buffett, tells Fortune that he sees himself and his late wife, Susie, in Bill and Melinda--and that is just one reason why Buffett calls the Gateses “the perfect solution” to manage and disperse his billions to philanthropy.

Years before Melinda French met and married Bill Gates, she had a love affair--with an Apple computer.

She was growing up in Dallas in a hard-working middle-class family. Ray French, Melinda‘s dad, stretched their budget to pay for all four children to go to college. An engineer, he started a family business on the side, operating rental properties. “That meant scrubbing floors and cleaning ovens and mowing the lawns,” Melinda recalls. The whole family pitched in every weekend. When Ray brought home an Apple III computer one day when she was 16, she was captivated. “We would help him run the business and keep the books,” she says. “We saw money coming in and money going out.”

Of all the tricks that life can play, it’s hard to imagine any stranger than what befell Melinda French. Today she is living in a gargantuan high-tech mansion on the shores of Lake Washington, married to the richest man in America--and giving billions of dollars away. When she married Bill Gates 14 years ago, she bought into a complex bargain. On the one hand, she became half of what has turned out to be the world’s premier philanthropic partnership. The Bill & MelindaGates Foundation has assets of $37.6 billion, making it the world’s largest. In that total is $3.4 billion that Warren Buffett has already given, and still to come are nine million Berkshire Hathaway B shares, currently worth $41 billion, that he has pledged to contribute in coming years. Assuming that Berkshire shares continue to rise and that the Gateses continue to bestow their own wealth on their foundation, Melinda and Bill will very likely give away more than $100 billion in their lifetimes. Already the foundation has disbursed $14.4 billion--more than the Rockefeller Foundation has distributed since its creation in 1913 (even adjusted for inflation).

Along the way, Melinda has sacrificed privacy, security, simplicity, and normalcy. In the late 1990s, during the Microsoft msft antitrust trial, her husband was widely regarded as the biggest bully in business. And isn’t anyone married to Bill Gates susceptible to losing her identity--to being perceived as the ultimate accessory?

Forgive her if she overcompensates. One day this past fall she spent many hours at her children’s school (the Gateses have two daughters, ages 5 and 11, and a son, 8) and then hosted a dozen dinner guests, including four African health ministers who were in Seattle for the Bill & MelindaGates Foundation Malaria Forum. By 10 P.M., after everyone had left, she was feeling frazzled and panicky about her speech the next morning. “Just go to bed!” Bill told her. “You know so much about malaria.” Melinda dreads the spotlight, but the following morning she faced more than 300 scientists, doctors, and health officials. She unveiled an audacious plan to eradicate malaria--a disease that kills more than one million people annually and has eluded a cure for centuries--and then answered questions with Bill. Afterward the crowd buzzed about this woman whom even they, recipients of the Gateses‘ billions, hardly know.

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Today, at 43, MelindaGates is ready to reveal her full self--to go public, so to speak. “I had always thought that when my youngest child started full-day school I’d step up,” she says, sitting down with Fortune for her first-ever profile. Although she admits she would prefer to stay out of public view forever, her older daughter got her thinking. “I really want her to have a voice, whatever she chooses to do,” she says. “I need to role-model that for her.” She is spending more time on foundation work, up to 30 hours a week. “As I thought about strong women of history, I realized that they stepped out in some way.”

She is stepping up also because her husband is doing the same. Beginning in July, Bill, who is nine years older than Melinda, plans to spend more than 40 hours a week on philanthropy, leaving 15 or so for his duties as chairman of Microsoft. Friends of the couple say that he wouldn’t be shifting gears if it weren’t for Melinda. Moreover, they say, she has helped Bill become more open, patient, and compassionate. “Bullshit!” he bellows. Nicer, perhaps? “No way!” he shouts, grinning because he knows it’s true. One thing he admits readily: Thanks to Melinda, he is easing comfortably into his new role. About the philanthropic work he says, “I don’t think it would be fun to do on my own, and I don’t think I’d do as much of it.”

This is not exactly a marriage of equals. Melinda is better educated than Bill, having graduated from Duke University with a BA (a double major in computer science and economics) and an MBA. Harvard’s most celebrated dropout, Bill was awarded an honorary degree last June. Melinda also outperforms him athletically. She runs once a week with a few friends--seven miles in an hour, a brisk pace--and tries to exercise five days a week. She has completed the Seattle marathon and climbed, with ropes and crampons, to the peak of 14,410-foot Mount Rainier. As for Bill, Melinda says, “He’s finally started to run in the last year.” To give him credit, he is an aggressive tennis player and a decent golfer--sometimes playing with Melinda. Beyond that, though, running on the treadmill while watching DVDs three nights a week is all Bill can do to keep up with his fit wife.

Melinda also understands people better than he does, Bill admits. In fact, he uses her as a sounding board, sometimes for personnel matters at Microsoft. In 2000, when Steve Ballmer, with whom Bill has worked for 28 years, replaced him as CEO, Melinda helped ease the awkward transition. “Melinda and I would brainstorm about it,” Bill says. “You always benefit from your key confidante telling you, ‘You think so-and-so stepped on your toes? Well, maybe he didn’t mean to. Maybe you’re wrong.'” Says the couple’s close friend Warren Buffett, who has known them since 1991: “Bill really needs her.”

When it comes to investing their philanthropic assets, Melinda wields even greater influence. Early on she and Bill agreed to focus on a few areas of giving, choosing where to place their money by asking two questions: Which problems affect the most people? And which have been neglected in the past? While many philanthropists take the same tack, the Gateses, who love puzzles, apply particular rigor. “We literally go down the chart of the greatest inequities and give where we can effect the greatest change,” Melinda says. So while they don’t give to the American Cancer Society, they have pumped billions into the world’s deadliest diseases--most importantly AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis--and failing public high schools in the U.S. And while Bill is drawn, naturally, to vaccine research and scientific solutions that may be decades away, Melinda is interested in alleviating suffering right now. “You can’t save kids just with vaccines,” she says. “I’d go into rural villages in India and think, ‘Okay, we saved this child. But the cows are defecating in the stream coming into the village. There are other things we need to be doing.'”

Those other things include funding insecticide-treated bed nets to ward off malaria-carrying mosquitoes, providing microbicides to prevent the transmission of AIDS, and offering microloans and insurance to help the poorest of the poor start businesses and farms. The Gateses‘ latest mission, which developed out of a trip Melinda took to Kenya two years ago, is to recreate for Africa a green revolution similar to the program that increased crop yields in Latin America and Asia beginning in the 1940s. In 2006 the Gates Foundation formed a $150 million alliance with the Rockefeller Foundation. “Melinda is a total-systems thinker,” says Rockefeller president Judith Rodin. “She and Bill dive into issues. They care deeply, deeply, deeply about making a difference, but they don’t get starry-eyed. They demand impact.”

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The impact comes from the combination of Melinda‘s holistic vision and Bill’s brainpower. Bono, the rock star-humanitarian who is both a friend of the Gateses and a grantee (through his One antipoverty campaign), calls their relationship “symbiotic.” Noting Bill’s fierceness, Bono says, “Sometimes I call him Kill Bill. Lots of people like him--and I include myself--are enraged, and we sweep ourselves into a fury at the wanton loss of lives. What we need is a much slower pulse to help us be rational. Melinda is that pulse.” Buffett also believes that Melinda makes Bill a better decision-maker. “He’s smart as hell, obviously,” Buffett says. “But in terms of seeing the whole picture, she’s smarter.” Would Buffett have given the Gates Foundation his fortune if Melindawere not in the picture? “That’s a great question,” he replies. “And the answer is, I’m not sure.”

A Goal a Day

If you are successful, it is because somewhere, sometime, someone gave you a life or an idea that started you in the right direction. Remember also that you are indebted to life until you help some less fortunate person, just as you were helped. --Melinda Gates, Valedictory speech, Ursuline Academy, 1982

Unlike William H. Gates III, whose parents, Bill and Mary, were civic leaders in Seattle, Melinda French grew up not knowing privilege or wealth. Her father worked on the space program at LTV. Her mother was a stay-at-home mom who didn’t go to college and regretted it. Says Melinda, who has one sister 14 months older and two younger brothers: “My parents told us, ‘No matter what college you get into, we will pay for it.'”

That Apple III was actually the family’s second computer; when Melinda was 14, her father brought home an Apple II, the first consumer computer on the market. “I finagled it to be in my bedroom so I could play games on it,” she says. She learned BASIC, the programming language, and taught it to other kids during summer vacations.

Life was a test, and Melinda believed she had to ace it. Susan Bauer, her math and computer science teacher at Ursuline Academy, an all-girls Catholic high school in Dallas, recalls, “Every day she had a goal.” Melinda laughs, a bit embarrassed at the mention: “The goals were run a mile, learn a new word, that sort of thing.” During her freshman year she looked up recent graduates’ college choices. She discovered that only Ursuline’s top two students had gotten into elite schools. “I realized that the only way to get into a good college was to be valedictorian or salutatorian. So that was my goal,” she explains. She hoped to go to Notre Dame.

Didn’t we all know this girl in high school? The star student, captain of the drill team, candy striper in the hospital, tutor at the public school on the other side of the tracks? Melinda was all that. At Ursuline, where the motto is Serviam (Latin for “I will serve”), volunteerism was a requirement. Her ambition, insists Bauer, “was never abrasive. Never. She was always lovely and charming, and she would win people over by being persuasive.”

She made valedictorian and got into Notre Dame. But Notre Dame did not get her. When she and her dad visited, she recalls, officials at the university told them that “computers are a fad” and that they were shrinking the computer science department. “I was crushed,” Melinda says. Duke, which was expanding in computer science, got her instead. She earned her BA and MBA in five years. Then a helpful recruiter from IBM, where Melinda had worked as a summer intern, directed her to Microsoft. “I told the recruiter that I had one more interview--at this young company, Microsoft,” she recalls. “She said to me, ‘If you get a job offer from them, take it, because the chance for advancement there is terrific.'”

Dating the Boss

Arriving in Seattle in 1987 as a marketing manager for a predecessor of Word, Melinda, 22, was naive about what Microsoft held for her. “There were a lot of idiosyncratic people. They were all so smart, and they were changing the world,” she says, unfazed that she was the youngest recruit and the only woman among ten MBAs. The culture, though, did faze her. “It was a very acerbic company,” she recalls. That culture trickled down from the top, where Gates and Ballmer badgered and harangued managers. Melinda thought about leaving Microsoft.

But four months after she started, during her first trip to New York City, for the PC Expo trade show, she went to a group dinner and sat next to the CEO. “He certainly was funnier than I expected him to be,” she recalls. What attracted Bill to Melinda? “I guess her looks,” he says.

Later that fall, on a Saturday afternoon (“Everybody worked on Saturday,” she says), Melinda and Bill ran into each other in a Microsoft parking lot. “We talked awhile, and then he said, ‘Will you go out with me two weeks from Friday night?’ I said, ‘Two weeks from Friday? That’s not nearly spontaneous enough for me. I don’t know. Call me up closer to the day.'” Bill called Melindalater that day, rattling off his lineup of meetings and commitments. “I promised I would meet him later that night,” she says.

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The scrawny brainiac had just become a billionaire from Microsoft’s 1986 IPO. Yet even that kind of money can’t buy you love. Asked if Melinda played hard to get, Bill replies, “She was hard to get!” Both Melinda and her mother decided that dating the CEO was not a good idea. But, says Bill, “we found ourselves deeply emotionally connected.” Melinda was adamant that their relationship would not affect her work. “I wanted no public exposure. And I drew this line in the sand that I would never, ever, ever go to him on anything related to work.” She explains, “It reached the point that Bill would say to me, ‘You never tell me what you’re doing.'”

The CEO’s attention notwithstanding, Melinda French was a hotshot. In nine years at Microsoft she rose to general manager of information products (Expedia, Encarta, Cinemania) and oversaw 300 employees. Her record wasn’t perfect. Remember Microsoft Bob, the version of Word for people afraid of computers? That was Melinda‘s baby. (“Too cute,” she says.) But even on troubled projects, Melinda was seen as a strong team builder. Says Patty Stonesifer, Melinda‘s former boss at Microsoft and now CEO of the Gates Foundation: “No question, if she had stayed, she would have been on the executive team at Microsoft.”

Melinda worried about marrying Bill. “Bill had money,” she says. “To me, it was like, Okay, Bill has money. Big deal.” She saw what success was doing to him--robbing him of his privacy and a normal life. Both Melinda and Bill, in fact, questioned whether his conquer-the-world capitalist nature could co-exist with a family. “I thought, ‘What would it be like to be married to someone who works that hard?'”

A friend from Omaha juiced the relationship. On Easter Sunday in 1993, Bill and Melinda were visiting his parents at their vacation home in Palm Springs when he announced that it was time to head back to Seattle. They returned to their private jet. The pilot announced the route. Bill drew the shades. To distract Melinda he pulled out a jigsaw puzzle. (“Bill’s very good at complicated jigsaw puzzles, but she’s unbelievable,” Buffett says.) When the plane touched down and the doors opened, “There’s Warren with a bugle,” Melinda recalls. (This isn’t Seattle, Melinda. It’s Omaha!) As Buffett drove them to Borsheim’s, a jewelry emporium owned by Berkshire Hathaway, he kept ribbing: “Bill, there’s a metric of love here. I spent 6% of my net worth on Susie’s ring. I don’t know how much you love Melinda, but 6% is the yardstick in Omaha.” Bill, worth $7.3 billion by this time, inquired about sales per square foot while Melinda checked out the goods. “I said an emerald. Bill said a diamond is more appropriate,” she recalls. She chose a diamond scandalously shy of Buffett’s price target.

Around that time Bill and Melinda started talking about giving his money away. They both figured they would wait until Bill was in his 60s, despite flak he was getting about his miserliness. “He had been advised by lawyers and accountants that he should have a foundation,” recalls his father, “but he refused. He said he didn’t need another entity.” Melinda‘s wedding shower in December 1993 shifted the thinking. Bill’s mother, Mary Gates, who was fighting breast cancer at the time, read a letter she had written to Melinda. “From those to whom much is given, much is expected” was its essence. Mary Gates passed away the following June. Her message spurred the creation of the first Gates charity, the William H. Gates III Foundation. Bill’s dad ran it out of cardboard boxes in his basement.

Initially, Melinda recalls, the idea was to put laptops in classrooms--which was derided by many as a self-serving gesture by a software tycoon. But at the time, she was volunteering in a couple of schools in Seattle, and she realized that “there’s a much bigger problem” than a technology divide. She and Bill decided to take on education reform broadly, focusing on secondary schools. “The piece that looked so intractable and no one was touching was high schools,” she says.

Soon after their wedding came the calling to global health. Melinda read a front-page New York Times story about children in developing countries dying of diseases that most Americans have never heard of--rotavirus, which kills more than 500,000 children every year--and others like malaria and tuberculosis that barely exist in the U.S. “I thought, ‘This can’t be happening,'”Melinda says, and she attached a note to Bill. (“This is how we work,” she says. “We constantly put stuff on each other’s desks.”) Reading the article, Bill learned about the World Bank’s 1993 Development Report, which calculated the cost of these diseases. He got the 344-page document and read it several times. “That is not something I will do,” notes Melinda. “I learn in a different way. I learn experientially.”

Buffett’s Gift

“Yes, we’re a couple that has fun discussing fertilizer while we walk on the beach,” says Bill proudly. We are sitting in the chairman’s office at Microsoft, and Bill, in an armchair, is rocking forward and back--an old habit that Melinda has not broken. “Melinda is more scientific and reads more than 99% of the people you’ll ever meet,” he says. When the couple reviews grants (of the 6,000 or so requests that the foundation receives annually, they personally evaluate only those asking for $40 million or more), they typically meet in a study or hash out their views during long walks. They discuss grant requests without notes in front of them because, as Melinda says, “You’d better have it in your head. That’s a good discipline.”

Former President Bill Clinton, who paid tribute to Melinda at a Save the Children dinner in New York City in September, said that two years ago, when he went to Africa with the Gateses, he and Bill “thought we were so smart. We showed how much we knew about all these issues, you know, and we asked all the right questions. Melinda just sat there patiently. And then when we shut up, she bored in and said, ‘What are you doing in education? What are you doing on prevention? How many people are using condoms?'” The two Bills wilted. “Melinda showed that in the end, women are stronger than men when it counts,” Clinton said.

As Melinda has handed him AIDS babies with dirty pants, her husband has developed a noticeable compassion. But hers seems natural. Her close friend Charlotte Guyman, a retired Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft executive who is now on Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway board, recalls a trip to Calcutta in 2004. One day, when Melinda had foundation meetings to attend, Guyman and a few in their group spent a half-day at Mother Teresa’s Home for the Dying. There, they were captivated by one young woman suffering from AIDS and tuberculosis who was “just bones,” Guyman says. No one could break the woman’s zombie-like stare. The next day Melinda visited. “Melinda walks in, pauses, and goes right over to this young woman,” Guyman recalls. “She pulls up a chair, puts the woman’s hand in her hands. The woman won’t look at her. Then Melinda says, ‘You have AIDS. It’s not your fault.’ She says it again: ‘It’s not your fault.’ Tears stream down the woman’s face, and she looks at Melinda.” Guyman can’t forget the connection. “Melinda sat with her. It seemed like forever.”

Seeing such suffering up close has led the Gateses to direct more money to what they call intervention: those bed nets, condoms, microbicides (clear, odorless gels that women apply vaginally) that help ward off illness and death until the magic bullet, vaccines, arrives. As AIDS among women has exploded in the developing world, Melinda, who goes to church regularly, feels no guilt about funding programs that more conservative Roman Catholics question. “Condoms save lives,” she says.

As mighty as the Gates Foundation is, Melinda insists that it needs partners. Relatively speaking, she says, “our pocket of money is quite small. The NIH budget is $29 billion. The state of California spends $60 billion in one year. If we spent that, our entire foundation would be out of business.” So the Gates Foundation has allied with other charities--Rockefeller, Michael and Susan Dell, Hewlett--and with companies such as GlaxoSmithKline and Procter & Gamble on various projects. The most successful joint venture is the GAVI Alliance, formerly called the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, which the Gateses helped start with donations of $1.5 billion. With 17 donor governments and the European Union in the fold, GAVI has distributed vaccines (including tetanus, hepatitis B, and yellow fever) to 138 million children in 70 of the world’s poorest countries. Thanks largely to this alliance, immunization rates are at all-time highs in the developing world, and more than two million premature deaths have been prevented.

Closer to home, where just 70% of American ninth-graders graduate on time from high school, reforming education has been a slog. Melinda admits that she and Bill were initially naive. “I thought that if we got enough schools started, people would say, ‘Let me build schools just like that.’ Just the opposite is true. You could get 1,000 schools up and running, and the system would pull them down.” In Denver and even in Seattle, the Gateses‘ backyard, some of their education efforts have failed for want of community engagement or the right leadership. So now theGateses are working with 1,800 high schools and aligning with superintendents, mayors, and governors wherever they can. “It’s always been one step forward and one step back,” Melindasays.

New York City, though, shows what Gates money can do. At 43 new small high schools funded by the Gates Foundation, graduation rates are 73%, compared with 35% for the schools they replaced. The Gateses‘ partner here happens to be Joel Klein, who led the government’s antitrust case against Microsoft a decade ago and now runs New York City’s public schools. Klein appreciates the irony of their alliance, calling the progress “a tribute to Bill.” For his part, Bill claims that it was no big deal to give his money to his former nemesis. And Melinda won’t say a word about the tension that stemmed from that period. “That’s part of our relationship that I need to keep private,” she says. But clearly she helped her husband get his head around the notion of working with Klein. “This is one of the great things about Bill,” she says. “Bill looks forward.” Buffett observes, “When Bill gave $50 million to New York City schools with Joel Klein in charge, I thought, ‘This guy can rise to the occasion.'”

Now, with another key partnership--the one with Buffett--the Gateses have more to spend and do than ever. Buffett had planned to hold onto his money until his death, but he changed his mind after his wife, Susie, died in 2004. In the spring of 2006, after lots of hinting, he broke the news to Bill. When Bill went home and told Melinda, they went on a long walk, and both cried. Melinda recalls, “We said to each other, ‘Oh, my gosh, do you know how responsible we’re going to feel giving someone else’s money away?'”

Buffett, who requires that the Gateses spend his annual contributions in full the following year, has given them just one piece of advice: “Stay focused.” He considers the Gateses “the perfect solution,” he says, because they are experts in philanthropy and also because he sees himself in Bill and his late wife in Melinda. “Bill is an awkward guy. He’s lopsided, but less lopsided since he’s with Melinda,” he says. “Susie made me less lopsided too.” Perhaps proving the point, Bill is quite touching when he explains his delight in disbursing Buffett’s billions. “Warren knows how lucky I am to have Melinda. It makes him look back at his time with Susie and wonder what it would have been like to be doing the giving with Susie.”

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Bill and Melinda are only now figuring out their new division of duties--crucial in a 500-person outfit that will probably double in size in two years. Bill, no organization geek (that would be Ballmer), intends to spend more time with scientists and academics, explore technology in education, and egg on the pharmaceutical companies that are not working on vaccines for the developing world. “Nobody gives them a hard time,” he complains. “That job is natural for me to do.” Melinda, meanwhile, intends to focus on personnel and culture. Some critics of the foundation contend that only managers who are close to the Gateses have the clout to get things done. Melinda says she wants to push decision-making further down the organization. Asked whether criticism about the Gates Foundation’s bureaucracy is valid, she replies, “You bet, some of it is.” Still, she says, “years ago we got compliments about how fast we reviewed grants. Those grants were swift, but they were not all as effective as they could have been. I’d rather be a bit more methodical and effective.” She also believes that the foundation must respond better to charges that its assets are invested in companies, including BP and Exxon Mobil, whose business interests can conflict with its altruistic goals. In May, Melinda and Bill directed endowment managers to divest stocks of companies invested in Sudan.

Housing Crisis

Melinda and Bill married on Jan. 1, 1994, in a small ceremony on the Hawaiian island of Lanai, with Willie Nelson, one of her favorite singers, performing--a surprise arranged by Bill. Afterward, Melinda says, she had “a mini sort of personal crisis.” This crisis was over the house Bill was building on Lake Washington outside Seattle. It was a bachelor’s dream and a bride’s nightmare: 40,000 square feet with several garages, a trampoline room, an indoor pool, a theater with a popcorn machine, and enough software and high-tech displays to make a newlywed feel as though she were living inside a videogame. “If I do move in,” she recalls telling Bill, “it’s going to be like I want it to be--our house where we have our family life.” After six months of discussions about shuttering the project, Melinda hired a new architect to redesign the place. They worked together to create intimate spaces, an office for her, and staff quarters out of sight and on the periphery.

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The couple moved in before construction was finished, which might have been a mistake. “Having a hundred workmen there gave her the message, ‘This is what your life is going to be like,'” Bill says. He used to tell Melinda: “Every day I want to hear one thing you like about this house.” She recalls: “I’d say, ‘Okay, I like the laundry chute.’ Or ‘Okay, here’s what I like and ten things I don’t like.'”

The house is, of course, a metaphor for Melinda‘s desire for normalcy. Her foremost concern is that the kids lead lives as normal as possible. She insisted on booting all hired help on weekends except for the security people and a sitter who arrives late in the day in case she and Bill want to exercise or go to dinner or a movie. Wednesday night is family swimming night. Friday night is family movie night. Bono, who has stayed with the Gateses several times, says, “That home has a stillness to it. It’s got a sort of Zen-like quality. Melinda has created that.” When they congregate in the light-filled kitchen overlooking the lake, Bono says, “they’re fun to hang out with. And they’re funny. She plays the straight man to his dark humor.”

Melinda appreciates Bono’s description. But does she like the house? “Now I like it,” she says, smiling. “I still wouldn’t build it. But I like it.”

The Gates children are reaching the age where they want to understand their parents’ passions. In 2006, Melinda and Bill took the two oldest children to South Africa, showing them slums and an orphanage in Cape Town. But the value of their work is often difficult to translate. A few years ago when they showed a documentary about polio, the kids asked about a crippled boy featured in the film: “Did you help that kid? Do you know the name of that kid? Well, why not?” On and on. “We don’t know that boy,” Melinda told the children, “but we’re trying to help lots of kids like him.” Bill’s explanation: “I’m in wholesale. I’m not in retail!”

As Bill says about their children, “They know the money is overwhelming.” And of course the kids have asked whether their parents will provide for them as generously as they do for those poor people who receive their billions. “We say, ‘You’ll be fine. You’ll still be very well-off,'” Bill says. While he and Melinda plan to give away 95% of their wealth in their lifetimes, they have not yet decided how much of what’s left will go to the children. Melinda says they will follow Warren Buffett’s philosophy: “A very rich person should leave his kids enough to do anything, but not enough to do nothing.”

“My fatal flaw?” Melinda says, laughing, during our third and final interview. She sometimes wishes for a simpler life, she admits. “It depends when you catch me. Most days, no. But if you’d asked me yesterday if I would like a much simpler life, I would have told you yes.” Yesterday was that night before the Malaria Forum, when she went to bed feeling unprepared. This morning, as she sat onstage and scrutinized the audience of renowned doctors and health experts, she says, “I was telling myself, ‘I know that person … I know his work … I know her work.'” She was giving herself a pep talk. “I told myself, ‘But I do know enough.'” She completed her goal for the day: calling for the eradication of one of the worst diseases the world has ever known. Tomorrow, another goal. Maybe it will be even bigger.

This article was originally published in the January 21, 2008 issue of Fortune.

]]>http://fortune.com/2016/03/16/melinda-gates-fortune-classic/feed/0AOL BUILD Speaker Series: Melinda GatesPattieWomen Do Twice As Much Unpaid Work As Men—Here’s Why That’s Not Okayhttp://fortune.com/2016/02/23/melinda-gates-women-unpaid-work/
http://fortune.com/2016/02/23/melinda-gates-women-unpaid-work/#respondTue, 23 Feb 2016 22:07:06 +0000http://fortune.com/?p=1559385]]>Correction: This article has been updated to reflect the fact that American women spend four hours per day on unpaid labor, not two.

On Tuesday morning, Bill and Melinda Gates published their annual letter outlining their philanthropic priorities. While Bill Gates’ portion of the letter focuses on energy, his wife’s portion focuses on time -- or, more specifically, the time women spend on unpaid work.

“Globally, women spend an average of 4.5 hours a day on unpaid work,” Gates writes. “Men spend less than half that much time.”

Gates goes on to explain that the burden of this unpaid work varies form country to country, with the gap between how much time men and women spend on unpaid work widening in poorer countries. In India, she notes, women spend about 6 hours, while men spend less than 1 hour.

But even in the U.S., the gap is significant: Women spend about four hours a day on unpaid work, while men spend about two hours and a half. American girls spend about two hours on chores a week more than boys, and are 15% less likely to be paid for them.

OECD/Melinda Gates

But the real issue isn’t how much time women spend on unpaid work -- it’s how much time they don’t spend contributing to society and pursuing higher education or a career. Gates argues that, given the opportunity, women would “spend more time doing paid work, starting businesses, or otherwise contributing to the economic well-being of societies around the world. The fact that they can't holds their families and communities back,” she says.

World Bank/Melinda Gates

Globally, women participate in the labor force at lower rates than men -- something that is surprising to no one, but should be, Gates writes. “The division of work depends on cultural norms, and we call them norms because they seem normal -- so normal that many of us don't notice the assumptions we're making.”

Gates’ goal, and the goal of her letter, isn’t simply to urge a 50/50 division of labor, but to “change what we think of as normal,” she writes.

]]>http://fortune.com/2016/02/23/melinda-gates-women-unpaid-work/feed/0Housewife Doing Hand Laundryvalzaryaal_2016_letter_graphics-02al-2016-letter-graphics-social-01Watch: Proof Bill and Melinda Gates are ice cold under pressurehttp://fortune.com/2015/05/22/bill-melinda-gates-red-nose-day/
http://fortune.com/2015/05/22/bill-melinda-gates-red-nose-day/#respondFri, 22 May 2015 14:41:15 +0000http://fortune.com/?p=1133551]]>Red nose day--a U.K. campaign launched this year in the U.S. by NBC to “[raise] money for children and young people living in poverty by simply having fun and making people laugh,” culminated Thursday night in a three-hour television special that featured celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Will Ferrell.

But it wasn’t just walkers of red carpets that got in on the action. Microsoft co-founder and former CEO Bill Gates and his wife Melinda also filmed a video pitch in support of red nose day and it’s poverty-fighting mission, though things didn’t quite goes as they planned.

Watch below for more:

]]>http://fortune.com/2015/05/22/bill-melinda-gates-red-nose-day/feed/0Bill Gates, Melinda GateschristopherrmatthewsMelinda Gates on Bill, ending poverty, and her plans to invest in women and girlshttp://fortune.com/2015/05/21/melinda-gates-plans-to-invest-in-women-and-girls/
http://fortune.com/2015/05/21/melinda-gates-plans-to-invest-in-women-and-girls/#commentsThu, 21 May 2015 20:13:45 +0000http://fortune.com/?p=1130120]]>Melinda Gates almost started her career at IBM, but a recruiter steered her elsewhere. "I had a standing offer [with IBM] in Dallas," Gates recalled. "I had turned down all the other companies except one." That company was Microsoft.

Gates says the IBM hiring manager “stopped me dead in my tracks and asked, 'Do you want my advice? IBM has a fantastic career track, but you have to go up each ladder of the chain.” Microsoft, said the recruiter, is a young, rapidly growing company with the promise of faster advancement for women.

She took the Microsoft MSFT job--and history was made. Bill Gates asked her out in the company parking lot one Saturday morning, a skeptical Melinda finally agreed (more on that later), and now--a quarter century and three children later--she is co-steering a $42.3 billion foundation widely recognized as a game-changer in global poverty.

Melinda Gates appeared on stage with me for a 90-minute interview Tuesday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, as part of our CSIS-Fortune "Smart Women Smart Power" series. She unveiled steps the Gates Foundation is taking to realign its enormous resources to make investment in women and girls a top priority. “We are making strides for women and girls, but not on a global scale,” she said.

That effort will include a renewed effort to disperse contraception, though the foundation will not fund abortion. “I believe in and use contraceptives," said the devout Catholic, who called family planning "vital in developing countries."

In our wide-ranging conversation, Gates defended genetically-modified crops--increasingly the target of protests here and in Europe--as critical to eradicating hunger in poor countries. She also criticized the anti-vaccine movement and offered this positive bit of news: “We are getting very close in polio eradication. This would be an amazing success in global health.”

Our disussion provided a rare glimpse into the modest childhood, as well as the intellect and drive, of the woman who is married to the richest man in the world, yet is also on a first name basis with some of the poorest villagers on the planet.

Melinda French Gates grew up in Dallas--one of four children--with a homemaker mother who regretted never going to college and an aerospace engineer father. Gates says her dad valued having women on his engineering teams, noting that she met female engineers who worked on Apollo projects at her father’s company picnics. She herself joined a computer science club at her Catholic girls school. "I love logic," she says. "Computer science to me was like a puzzle. I like the logic of it and working your way through."

Her parents, determined to send all four kids away to college, ran a real estate company on the side so they could afford tuition. Melinda and her sister were assigned to keep the books on their Apple 3 computer and painted the company’s rental properties on weekends. "I learned the flows of money, profit and loss. I knew what my parents bought [the homes] for and hoped to get," she recalled. When she attended Duke, she added an MBA to her computer science and economics degrees--and made a speedy climb up the Microsoft ladder for nine years.

When Bill Gates asked her out in that parking lot, the 23-year-old was put off by his suggestion that they plan dinner two weeks in the future. "I had no idea what I was going to be doing then. I said, 'that's not spontaneous enough for me,'" she recalls. She gave him her phone number and suggested they talk closer to the day. Instead, he called that night and the relationship bloomed even though "my mom didn't think it was a good idea."

The seeds of the Gates Foundation can be glimpsed in those dating years. Bill Gates would tote bags of mostly biology books along on their vacations. "Bill feels like he knows he [understands] something deeply only if he can explain it or teach it to someone," she says. "I wasn't going to read a whole biology book, but I was going to listen. I learned a lot of about the immune system."

Decades later, science and biology are central to the Gates Foundation work on immunizations and other health treatments. The number of children who die by age five has been cut in half since 1990, with the foundation playing a central role in more recent years.

Melinda Gates didn't even have a passport when she met Bill. She took her first trip to Africa when they were engaged. The journey was meant to be a fun and adventurous safari with other couples, but ended up offering painful life lessons as well.

"We loved the animals and the savannah, but you couldn't help but ask questions--like why whole towns were shut down," she says. In a Maasai cooking tent, the group bonded with villagers so well that one young man asked: “Can you come back in a few weeks? We are going to have a cutting ceremony for my sister.”

"We were all devastated" by the reference to genital mutilation, Gates says. "It made me realize I knew nothing about that culture. It started Bill and me on a series of learning journeys and questions.”

Now, though, she and her husband have said they plan to double down on the poverty-eradicating bet they made 15 years ago. They argue that over the next 15 years, the lives of people in poor countries will improve more than at any other time in history. “When I look at Africa, I don’t just see the destitute stories," Melinda Gates says. "I focus on the ingenuity and change of the communities.”

]]>http://fortune.com/2015/05/21/melinda-gates-plans-to-invest-in-women-and-girls/feed/1rsz_465788762kristenlbellstromWhy it’s impossible for companies to advance womenhttp://fortune.com/2015/03/19/why-its-impossible-for-companies-to-advance-women/
http://fortune.com/2015/03/19/why-its-impossible-for-companies-to-advance-women/#respondThu, 19 Mar 2015 14:41:34 +0000http://fortune.com/?p=1038405]]>Sometimes, I find this thought running through my head: how can the United States still not have a law providing paid maternity leave? What is this, 1965?

In case you're curious, the only other industrialized countries without paid maternity leave are the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Suriname, and Tonga.

This data point -- along with a wealth of other numbers about the health, education, and status of women and girls -- appears in the "No Ceilings" report recently published by the Clinton and Gates Foundations. It's a follow-up on 21 years of progress since the 1995 UN Conference on Women held in Beijing.
As the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania’s vice dean of executive education, an organizational psychologist, and an executive coach, I wasn't surprised -- unfortunately -- by much of the business-related data.

The report highlighted the fact that women's participation in the U.S. labor force has stagnated (55% of women compared with 82% of men), and that women are still much less likely than men to hold executive management or decision-making roles. This holds true even though women now outnumber men in universities. At Wharton, we have 7,000 to 8,000 executives coming through our courses and programs every year, and the proportion of women to men is nowhere near equitable.

A lack of laws and organizational policies such as paid maternity leave make it impossible for companies to retain women and advance them. Many of today's female middle managers earned their degrees sitting in classrooms alongside the same or even a lesser number of boys, yet the equality stops there if they happen to want a family. It's true that there's more engagement by men with their children these days, and that's wonderful, but it's not the same as making a systemic change in organizational policies.

The nuances of advancing a female manager up the ladder are very difficult to navigate. It's only through powerful, aggressive senior executive advocacy that companies can make the mindset change needed to boost women to that next level of leadership. Many organizations of course have policies and trainings for women, but these are mostly handled by HR departments. And even the best HR person who sits at the table of the business (which itself is rare) will hold little sway over the senior team and the board.

In a conversation related to the report held at NYU between Hillary and Chelsea Clinton and Melinda Gates, Hillary talked about entrenched beliefs: "Even if we get past the laws leveling the playing field... we are left with attitudes." She commented on how Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wants to "get our smart, educated women into the workforce" in order to revive his country's sluggish economy, but is running up against Japan's cultural biases.

I witnessed similar biases here in the US recently when I sat in on a meeting regarding a high-potential female manager and an upcoming overseas assignment. Because the woman had three young children, her manager decided that the most benevolent, empathetic choice would be to never mention the opportunity to her. But in fact, his decision was paternalistic; it was surrendering to the stereotype. And that's only one conversation: I guarantee you this will happen tomorrow afternoon to another high-potential female. "Well, she's got kids, so we'll give her a chance later."

I'm heartened, though, by seeing the likes of Hillary Clinton, Chelsea Clinton, and Melinda Gates get behind women's issues in a high-profile way, and with plenty of hard data. But it's disappointing that there is no powerhouse leader focused specifically on business. Facebook FB COO Sheryl Sandberg tried, with Lean In, and she did manage to reignite the conversation about women's success in the workplace.

But we need Sheryl Sandberg and someone else. Maybe Nissan's CEO Carlos Ghosn, who changed his organization in incredible ways and understands the power of transformational change. At the World Economic Forum in Davos this year, he sat on stage talking about women's leadership. We need someone like him championing the cause of executive women.

And let's keep the statistics coming. Let's find out if Google's GOOG reputedly excellent maternity policy actually contributes to its success. Let's find out which companies increased their market share because of the number of women in senior positions. Then somebody can sit down in this country and say to GE or Procter & Gamble or Colgate-Palmolive, "you need to get on this." Because, as Hillary put it during the NYU conversation, you've got to make more of a case than "you have to treat me the same." You have to be able to say, "Look at the data and see what you're losing if you don't."

Monica McGrath is the Vice Dean for the Aresty Institute of Executive Education at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. She is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Management focused on women and executive leadership.

Watch more business news from Fortune:

]]>http://fortune.com/2015/03/19/why-its-impossible-for-companies-to-advance-women/feed/0Monica McGrathnt2192Melinda Gates’ big prediction for womenhttp://fortune.com/2015/01/21/melinda-gates-annual-letter/
http://fortune.com/2015/01/21/melinda-gates-annual-letter/#respondThu, 22 Jan 2015 04:00:56 +0000http://fortune.com/?p=955128]]>In the next 15 years, the lives of people living in the world’s poorest countries will improve faster than at any other time in history, says Melinda Gates. A big catalyst for all of this positive change? Mobile phones.

That’s one major takeaway from Bill and Melinda Gates’ annual letter outlining the global trends that the billionaire couple is focused on in 2015. The financial lives of the poor are complicated, they write, and the poorest people around the world do not have access to financial services. By 2030, the explosion in digital banking will give the poor more control over their money and help lift them out of poverty.

The key to that transformation will be mobile phones: In 15 years, 2 billion people who don’t have a bank account today will be saving money and making payments with their phones.

And if women — as opposed to only the husbands — have access to phones, Melinda predicts that the economic transformation across countries will be even more remarkable.

“Women talk about if they can get hooked up to the banking services which have become ubiquitous in places like Kenya and Tanzania, they can then save small amounts of money,” she said in a meeting with a handful of reporters on Wednesday. “Saving a dollar a day or two dollars a day could change everything” for women. And their children.

Since launching the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2000, the foundation has distributed $31.6 billion in grants, mainly for global health projects in some 100 countries. The Gates believe that as more women save money through mobile banking, there will be a positive ripple effect.

More women will be able to save money and control their finances. In turn, they will be able to use savings for things like health services for their families. By 2030, the number of children around the world who die before the age of five will be 1 in 40, compared to 1 in 10 in 1990, according to the Gates Foundation.

With fewer infant deaths, more families will invest more in their children’s education — which, in turn, would stimulate the global economy, according to the Gates Foundation.

Gates spoke about how much information that people in the Western world take for granted that can be revolutionary for people in poorer countries. Seven out of ten people living in sub-Saharan Africa are farmers, she notes. If these families had access to a mobile phone, they could find out how much their crops are going for in the city market before they make the trip in — which would allow them to more effectively price their own crops and increase profits.

“Fifteen years from now, I want to see these farmers with healthier kids, getting more yield off their farms, getting their boys and girls into the education system and persisting through secondary school,” she said. “That is transformative in their lives.”

Yet the Gates’ acknowledge in their letter that there are cultural challenges that make it difficult for women in many countries to gain access to mobile phones without their husbands’ consent. In Bangladesh, for example, only 46% of women own a phone, compared with 76% of men.

Getting men to think more about the economic benefits of giving their wife access to mobile banking and sending their daughters to school through secondary education is challenging, says Gates. But by rooting the discussion in what is important them, mainly the health of their children, men are more likely to see the benefits of empowering the women in their family to succeed.

“Men and boys have to be a part of it,” she said “They are often the ones making the decisions about [what to do] with very little resources in their family and who they are going to educate.”

]]>http://fortune.com/2015/01/21/melinda-gates-annual-letter/feed/0Fortune Most Powerful Women 2014carolinefairchildMelinda Gates shares scalable ways to invest in womenhttp://fortune.com/2014/10/24/melinda-gates-women/
http://fortune.com/2014/10/24/melinda-gates-women/#respondFri, 24 Oct 2014 11:24:11 +0000http://fortune.com/?p=833815]]>For Melinda Gates, investing in women is not just good for corporate businesses. It’s good for growing economies around the world.

At Fortune’sMost Powerful Women Summit earlier this month, the lauded philanthropist and co-founder of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation spoke to a crowd of prominent female executives about the importance of investing in women and girls around the world. "It's not enough to just talk about women and girls," Gates said. "We have to be willing to stand up and say, 'I'm willing to fund some of these things.'” In a follow-up interview with Fortune this week,Gates expanded on her talk at the Summit and explained why she is focusing her efforts on supporting women and girls around the country.

Edited excerpts:

What surprised you the most from the interviews during the Summit?

I was struck--and really impressed--by the fact that even though it was such a large scale event, it really felt like a series of candid conversations. It managed to be personal. There was a broad range of professional experiences and impressive backgrounds on that stage, but the speakers did more than just share tips and insights.

When was the moment that you realized helping women and girls was essential to global development?

When I first began focusing on family planning, it became clear that if you want to make life better for a community, you should start by investing in its women and girls. When I talk to women, a universal desire is to bring every good thing to our kids. Women tend to spend their resources on their families--prioritizing things like healthcare, nutritious food, education, and all the building blocks of a thriving society. The way I think about it is that when we invest in women, we invest in the people who invest in everyone else. So when we match their commitment with our own, great things are possible.

You said on stage that we are not helping women and girls enough around the world "at scale." What did you mean by that?

What I meant is that we--as a global community--have learned a lot of different ways to help women in a lot of different places. Of course, the instinct now is to scale up these solutions and get them to absolutely everyone--but that's not always a simple process. It's important to recognize that gender roles vary across cultures, and women's lives and circumstances are so different. So helping women and girls at scale means spreading proven interventions that work--like family planning tools and financial services--but it also means working with women and men to develop solutions based on their own unique needs and preferences.

In all your travels around the world, where have you been most encouraged by the development of programs for women and girls?

This is a hard question to answer--and that's a good thing, because there's so much great work being done, it's hard to choose. It's less about a specific a policy or program that the development community is creating, it's more about what women are creating for themselves. I see this all the time when I visit women's groups--meetings of ten or twenty women who are coming together to support and empower each other. These groups are a really big deal in developing countries, because often the women who join them live in male-dominated societies where they spend the majority of their days in male-dominated households. But women tell me that when they spend time together in these groups, they see that they have a lot more power over their lives and their futures than they ever imagined.

When I was in Tanzania earlier this year, I met with women who were pooling their money and giving each other loans to start little business ventures--like buying chickens to sell eggs at market. I was so struck by how much hope there was in the air. These women could see a better life for themselves and their families, and they could see their own actions helping create that. If we match these women's commitment with ours, really incredible things are possible.

Why do you think it has been so long since new types of contraceptives have been developed and why is it particularly important for women in developing countries?

Even though our existing forms of contraception aren't great, as far the market is concerned, they're good enough. Oral contraceptives and IUDs work pretty well in countries like the U.S. and in most parts of Europe, where it isn't a big deal for women to get a prescription refilled or get to a doctor to have a device implanted. So there isn't much market incentive for companies to begin researching innovative new forms of contraception. But in developing countries, these existing forms don't work as well, because needs are different.

Women in developing countries tell us they want longer lasting forms of contraception that could be self-administered--which makes sense because it's often harder for women in places where there isn't much healthcare infrastructure to get to a clinic. So one thing our foundation is doing is making the investments that will create that market demand and turn the world's greatest scientific minds to meeting the needs of the world's poorest women and girls.

You also said on stage that you don't get a "do-over" with your kids. What are some things you do to ensure you get it right the first time around?

Bill and I are lucky in that we both had really good examples to look up to in our own parents. Both of us grew up in really loving, supportive households that put a lot of emphasis on giving back, and that's something we've tried to replicate for our own family. But honestly, sometimes it's just the simple stuff. My own mom made a point to have a glass of iced tea with me after school each day so we could talk about what was going on in my life--what I was struggling with and excited about. I've tried to provide that same kind of support to my own kids, which sometimes means sharing a snack after school and sometimes means things like going to soccer games. My oldest, Jenn, just started college, and I'm on the phone with her as much as she'll let me.

Who are some of the role models that have helped you in the development of the foundation?

There are so many people who are instrumental in our foundation--from incredible staff to our partners on the ground who are helping us achieve maximum impact to the people who have helped and inspired us. To single out just a few of my role models, Bill Foege is an epidemiologist who is going to go down in history for his role in eradicating small pox. He's a giant in the field of public health and proof that the global health community can and should rally to meet ambitious goals.

In addition to being a fellow graduate of Duke, Paul Farmer is a physician who's bringing medical care and compassion to people in some of the world's poorest places. Molly Melching has spent more than 40 years in Senegal improving lives for some of the country's poorest people by working together with communities so that change is driven from the center out, not the top down. They're all heroes to me.

And lastly, I have to mention Mother Teresa, for inspiring the world to focus on the poor. My own commitment to service and social justice is deeply grounded in Catholic teachings, and Mother Teresa is really the embodiment of those values.

What is your career advice for young women?

My advice is to trust your own voice and trust your own instincts. When I went to business school and started thinking about what kind of leader I wanted to be, I worried a lot about whether my management and leadership styles were close enough to what I saw others doing. But when, over time, I developed the confidence to stop trying to emulate others and to lead in a way that felt comfortable and true to me, it made all the difference. So trust yourself and trust your own voice. Women speaking up for themselves and for those around them is the strongest force we have to change the world.

]]>http://fortune.com/2014/10/24/melinda-gates-women/feed/0Fortune Most Powerful Women 2014carolinefairchildMelinda Gates on philanthropy: ‘I want to make sure we do the right thing for women and girls’http://fortune.com/2014/10/08/melinda-gates-on-philanthropy-i-want-to-make-sure-we-do-the-right-thing-for-women-and-girls/
http://fortune.com/2014/10/08/melinda-gates-on-philanthropy-i-want-to-make-sure-we-do-the-right-thing-for-women-and-girls/#respondWed, 08 Oct 2014 16:57:41 +0000http://fortune.com/?p=813446]]>In order to improve the lives of women and girls around the world, “it’s not enough to just to talk about women and girls,” Melinda Gates says. Speaking directly to an audience of women CEOs, executives, and business leaders, she said that people have to be willing to use their voice, dollars, and network in order to make an impact. “We have to be willing to stand up and say, ‘I’m willing to fund some of these things.'”

Gates, a philanthropist and co-founder of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, was interviewed on Wednesday by Fortune senior editor-at-large Pattie Sellers at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit at Laguna Niguel, Calif.

The Gates Foundation, one of the most active private foundations in the world, recently declared in Science magazine that it aims to put women and girls “at the center of development.”

“One of the things that I’ve gotten to do for the foundation is really to travel,” Gates said. She talked about how she would break away from city centers during her trips on behalf of the organization to explore nearby villages and slums and speak to women who lived there. The side trips brought her a greater understanding of the lives they lived, she said, and how the Gates Foundation could have greater impact on their day-to-day existence. Gates realized her foundation wasn’t doing a lot for women at scale.

“At the Foundation, we do pretty siloed work,” she said, indicating its work on eradicating malaria and polio. “We weren’t getting the impact we wanted for women and their families,” she said. “We needed to move the foundation to do more of this work. We need to move the world to do more of this work.”

The Gates Foundation was started as a research and development organization, with a focus on mass diseases. “We also need to do delivery,” Gates said. It wouldn’t be enough to create a vaccine or cure for a disease if the mothers of at-risk children wouldn’t allow its distribution. “I want to make sure we do the right thing for women and girls,” she said.

Gates also spoke about her number-one priority: the importance of family planning and contraceptives. Family planning, she said, can change the trajectory of a woman’s life and the lives of her children. “We think about 14 million girls are married before the age of 18,” she said, and the maternal mortality rate is still “huge around the world.”

The ability for a women to plan when and how often to have children is crucial for her health and key for her economic growth. One of the goals of the foundation is to fund research into new types of contraceptives. Gates spoke about a Washington University scientist who is looking to develop an oral contraceptive that would dissolve under a woman’s tongue like a breath mint.

In addition to the focus on women and girls, the Gates Foundation is still looking to help tackle mass diseases, and recently gave $50 million towards the fight against Ebola. Gates Foundation head Sue Desmond-Hellmann saw the crisis coming and convinced Bill and Melinda Gates to put their money towards early prevention. Gates spoke about how a Gates Foundation-funded polio clinic in Nigeria decided to convert to an emergency Ebola clinic, helping that nation to keep its Ebola rate to only 19 cases.

When asked by Fortune managing editor Alan Murray how the Gates Foundation works with governmental organizations like the World Health Organization, Gates spoke about the need for public-private partnerships. For instance, UNICEF, the Gates Foundation, and the University of Washington might have different, but complementary, takes on how similar research and health initiatives, and use those differences to improve each other’s work.

“Intellectual pushback is what you want in a private-public partnership,” she said.

]]>http://fortune.com/2014/10/08/melinda-gates-on-philanthropy-i-want-to-make-sure-we-do-the-right-thing-for-women-and-girls/feed/015292815727_3e590428d2_kmeganmccarthyfortuneGates Foundation pledges $50 million for Ebola battlehttp://fortune.com/2014/09/11/gates-foundation-pledges-50-million-for-ebola-battle/
http://fortune.com/2014/09/11/gates-foundation-pledges-50-million-for-ebola-battle/#respondThu, 11 Sep 2014 14:59:05 +0000http://fortune.com/?p=785213]]>This post is in partnership with Time. The article below was originally published at Time.com

By Rishi Iyengar, TIME

The fight against Ebola received a desperately needed monetary boost Wednesday, with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announcing a $50 million donation.

In a statement, the foundation said it would release flexible funds to U.N. agencies combatting the disease, which has already killed over 2,000 people in its worst ever outbreak.

"We are working urgently with our partners to identify the most effective ways to help them save lives now and stop transmission of this deadly disease," said Gates Foundation CEO Sue Desmond-Hellmann.

The foundation said it has already committed $10 million out of the total $50 million to fighting Ebola -- $5 million to the World Health Organization (WHO) for emergency operations and research, and another $5 million to the U.S. Fund for UNICEF to support efforts in the worst-hit countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. In addition, it will also pledge $2 million to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

There have been promising developments in the search for a cure, with a new vaccine reportedly producing positive results. However, the rapidly accelerating spread of Ebola has caused the WHO to project that over 20,000 people will be infected by October.

]]>http://fortune.com/2014/09/11/gates-foundation-pledges-50-million-for-ebola-battle/feed/0Ebola KenemahuddlestontomGates to Stanford grads: Let your heart breakhttp://fortune.com/2014/06/22/bill-gates-stanford-commencement-speech-2014/
http://fortune.com/2014/06/22/bill-gates-stanford-commencement-speech-2014/#respondMon, 23 Jun 2014 03:10:15 +0000http://fortune.com/?p=725267]]>How do you inspire a group of unusually smart, hard working, optimistic, and largely privileged youngsters who are already destined for success? Encourage them to learn from those most in need; urge them confront inequity; exhort them channel their optimism with empathy; oh, and remind them that for all their accomplishments, they wouldn’t be where they are without a heavy dose of luck.

At a time when inequality is becoming one of the central issues of our time, the Gateses, whose foundation has become one of the most formidable philanthropic enterprises in history, exhorted graduates to pursue a mission-driven life. While both speakers were inspiring, it was Melinda Gates who delivered the most stirring lines. Here’s she is on channeling optimism:

Optimism for me isn’t a passive expectation that things will get better; it’s a conviction that we can make things better--that whatever suffering we see, no matter how bad it is, we can help people if we don’t lose hope and we don’t look away.

Drawing from her own experience witnessing abject poverty, heartbreaking disease and the ravages and stigma of AIDS in India, she later added:

Let your heart break. It will change what you do with your optimism.

And here’s the bit about luck and why it’s important:

Bill worked incredibly hard and took risks and made sacrifices for success. But there is another essential ingredient of success, and that ingredient is luck--absolute and total luck.

When were you born? Who were your parents? Where did you grow up? None of us earned these things. They were given to us.

When we strip away our luck and privilege and consider where we’d be without them, it becomes easier to see someone who’s poor and sick and say “that could be me.” This is empathy; it tears down barriers and opens up new frontiers for optimism.

So here is our appeal to you: As you leave Stanford, take your genius and your optimism and your empathy and go change the world in ways that will make millions of others optimistic as well.

The talk may well join another Stanford commencement address--the classic 2005 speech by Bill Gates’ longtime rival Steve Jobs--in the ranks of the most memorable ever. And it seemed especially apt for Stanford, a university that is minting innovators and entrepreneurs are an unprecedented rate. But not all successful Silicon Valley enterprises are created equal, or as the investor Peter Thiel famously bemoaned, “we wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.” Stanford, for example, recently spawned the likes of Snapchat – disappearing messages--and Theranos--a potential revolution in healthcare. Both are successful and both are worth billions. But there’s little doubt as to which one Bill and Melinda Gates think Stanford graduates should join or try to emulate.

]]>http://fortune.com/2014/06/22/bill-gates-stanford-commencement-speech-2014/feed/0bill-melinda-gates-stanford-commencement-2014mhelftLessons from the world’s most successful peoplehttp://fortune.com/2014/05/29/lessons-from-the-worlds-most-successful-people/
http://fortune.com/2014/05/29/lessons-from-the-worlds-most-successful-people/#respondThu, 29 May 2014 14:24:17 +0000http://beta.fortune.com/?p=499878]]>The best career advice is universal. It applies to a CEO of a Fortune 500 company and to a kid aspiring to make it through college.

I tried to keep this in mind last week when I spoke at Allentown Central Catholic High School, which in 1978 sent me on my way from Pennsylvania to what has turned out to be a thrilling and very satisfying life and career. I told the CCHS students, who packed Rockne Hall for inductions of their new Student Council and class officers, that I’ve spent the past 30 years at Fortune “going to school on success.” That is, my job profiling some of the world’s most successful people–from Oprah Winfrey to Yahoo YHOO CEO Marissa Mayer to Rupert MurdochNWS to Melinda Gates–is to learn and explain what makes these extraordinary people win and adapt to all sorts of challenges. I pared my message to 10 pieces of advice, which include a few obvious truths and, I hope, some enlightening points that are universal.

1.Don't plan your career. Most of the really successful people I've met and interviewed these past 30 years at Fortune had no clue what they wanted to do when they were in high school or even in college. They stayed flexible and open to possibilities.

2. Forget the career ladder; climb the jungle gym. In a world that’s unpredictable and changing faster than ever, who knows what tomorrow's ideal jobs will be? Think of your career as a jungle gym. Sharpen your peripheral vision and look for opportunities over here or over there, and swing to them. Facebook FB COO Sheryl Sandberg kindly credits me in Chapter 3 of her best-seller, Lean In, for introducing the concept of the jungle gym.

3. Pick people over pay. Work with good people who are smarter than you are, so you can stay stimulated and learn everyday.

4. Do every job as if you were going to be doing it for the rest of your life. If you spend your time thinking about what you want to do next, you're not fully focused on your current assignment. And unless you focus, you won't compete successfully with people who are "all in."

5. Do the job that you’re supposed to do, but think: What's not getting done? Always consider how you can contribute to the bigger whole — and don't be afraid to stumble. I wrote a 1995 cover story called “So you fail, so what!” Today, recovering from failure is a badge of honor that bosses want to see in people they hire.

6. Be curious. Everyone you meet is worth learning from. People derail in their careers, studies show, when they stop learning. Yes, continual learning matters more than where you go to school or how many degrees you rack up.

7. Be nice to everyone. As you get older, you'll have fewer degrees of separation with more and more people. Who knows how someone who doesn’t matter to you today might matter critically tomorrow? Don’t burn any bridges. Build your bridges now to last forever.

8. Listen. Listen more than you talk. I was shy in high school. I'm still a closet introvert, but I'm a good conversationalist because I’m extraordinarily interested in people, I ask questions (sometimes too many) and I listen carefully. Listening to someone carefully is giving them a gift.

9. To lead, line up your followers. Leadership has no long-term value without followers on track to become as strong as you are. Show a generosity of spirit that makes people want to work with you, because they know you’ll make them better.

10. Be honest and true. If people are in a foxhole with you, do they trust you to protect and help them? Make sure they do completely, by doing what you say you're going to do, always.

I closed my talk with wisdom from Warren Buffett, who told me during an interview last year how he defines success. The Berkshire Hathaway brk.a chief actually has two definitions: 1. Success is having what you want and wanting what you have. 2. Success is having the people whom you love love you. Isn’t it reassuring that one of the wealthiest men in the universe doesn’t equate success with money?

]]>http://fortune.com/2014/05/29/lessons-from-the-worlds-most-successful-people/feed/0SOC.06.16.14 Buffett 10Pattie140306095147-lean-in-240xaThe Fortune Interview: Melinda Gates and Susan Desmond-Hellmannhttp://fortune.com/2014/04/28/the-fortune-interview-melinda-gates-and-susan-desmond-hellmann-2/
Mon, 28 Apr 2014 23:55:48 +0000http://test-alley.fortune.com/2014/04/28/the-fortune-interview-melinda-gates-and-susan-desmond-hellmann-2/]]>When Susan Desmond-Hellmann was approached by Bill and Melinda Gates about becoming the new CEO of their foundation, she was busy. A cancer doctor who had worked in Uganda early in her career, Desmond-Hellmann had moved on to big jobs in the pharma industry. As president of product development at Genentech, she helped transform the company into an R&D powerhouse for cancer drugs, and in 2009, after Swiss giant Roche Holdings bought Genentech for $46.8 billion, she moved to the University of California San Francisco as the first woman chancellor. There she was happily challenged, heading a research university and medical center with 23,000 employees, and in her spare time serving on the boards of Procter & Gamble and Facebook. Running a nonprofit wasn't on her list of things to do.

When Melinda Gates flew down from Seattle last fall and asked her if she would be interested in the job, an unusual executive courtship ensued. Desmond-Hellmann, stunned at first, almost declined to be considered. But after two months of intense conversations with both Gateses, Desmond-Hellmann, 56, became convinced that the opportunity to help eradicate some of the world's worst diseases was too compelling to pass up. She agreed to step in as CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on May 1. Fortune Senior Editor at Large Pattie Sellers--who profiled Melinda Gates in a 2008 cover story--sat down with her and Desmond-Hellmann for an exclusive Fortune interview. The two women talked about how they sealed their partnership at the world's largest private foundation, how they plan to deploy its $40 billion, and how Warren Buffett--who has pledged his fortune to the Gates Foundation--views successful leadership.

FORTUNE: How did the two of you get together?

DESMOND-HELLMANN: Well, my husband actually worked at the Gates Foundation [in TKYEAR.]. So I knew a little bit about the Foundation and a lot about HIV/AIDS that Nick had worked on. But UCSF gives an award called the UCSF Medal. It is our equivalent in the University of California system of an honorary degree. And I was delighted last year to give this UCSF Medal to Melinda. It was just so inspiring for me that Melinda agreed to accept the UCSF Medal, and I was the MC for an event where we honored Melinda. So Melinda came down. We had a nice chat.

Had you met before?

DESMOND-HELLMANN: We had met a couple of times.

GATES: We met at Sheryl Sandberg's house. We had a talk there.

DESMOND-HELLMANN: Melinda came to the Sheryl Sandberg event, and then we met at a couple of things, but real quick, like the meet-and-greet kind of thing where you shake hands. We got to spend more time when Melinda was down for the April event, and I was just so blown away.

[Five months later, the Gates Foundation announced that CEO Jeff Raikes planned to step down. Melinda Gates called Desmond-Hellmann, and during a meeting in the Chancellor's office at UCSF, she asked her if she'd have an interest in heading the Foundation.]

DESMOND-HELLMANN: All I could think about was--you know the job of a chancellor, right? You're running the place, you're chief cheerleader, chief real estate person, chief fundraiser, especially at a time when you're just coming out of a big recession and the state of California hasn't been exactly opening the money valve. It's like "chief keep this place great and get up every morning and do that." I was in full execution mode.

GATES: You were very happy in your job. I thought that was fantastic.

DESMOND-HELLMANN: The more we talked and the longer we went back and forth, I couldn't imagine not doing it. I always tell people, if you get a chance, change the world. You know, Go big. Solving family planning, making polio go away, why not? I moved from "I'm all in at UCSF," to "OK, I'm open to thinking about what this would look like." We wanted to make sure that Bill and Melinda and I would be compatible. We had a lot of discussions about working style, values.

GATES: We saw all the right core values in Sue. We absolutely wanted somebody who's coming to the Foundation because of the mission. That was a given from the get-go, given the time she'd spent in Uganda and the way she thought about global health. And then Sue brought just an amazing set of attributes to the table. Her work in research, and she worked shoulder to shoulder with [former Genentech CEO] Art Levinson. So we knew she could work in a role alongside somebody else. But Bill and I have very different personalities, so could each of us work with Sue? Bill would meet alone with Sue, I would meet alone with Sue, we'd meet together. We had some phone conversation where Sue and I would talk on the phone alone and then the three of us would talk together. She was very accommodating because it was late night after the kids went to bed at 9 o'clock.

When Sue started at Genentech, it was not a cancer company. She had a lot to do with steering capital into cancer research and making Genentech the No. 1 biotech company in cancer. Was that a turn-on for you? And will Sue have a role in allocating your money?

GATES: I think one of the things that came out of the interview process is we hired a bold CEO. (Laughter) And we like that. That's good.

DESMOND-HELLMANN: No shrinking violet.

GATES: We actually had to say to ourselves, as a couple, is that going to be OK? We really are OK with this, right? Absolutely! And Sue was really clear about that. She had some what-ifs. "What if I want to try this, Melinda and Bill. What would you think of that?" Which was essentially asking us, "Am I going to have the degrees of freedom to do that? What if I wanted to have a staff doing a few things in this direction, would you be OK with that?" Sue, you were really clear that you love precision medicine. It's not the Foundation's work, but I don't expect Sue to turn off her views, her values and her love and passion around precision medicine.

DESMOND-HELLMANN: Bringing big data to health is what precision medicine is all about. I'm excited about the opportunity to do way more than classic genomics, to look at environment and the role of population health and public health in precision medicine. So, during the interview process, I couldn't imagine that I would want to be at the Foundation without the opportunity to think about that long-term, and could I be a strategic partner as the CEO?

You mean, could I be a strategic partner in terms of setting priorities on where the money goes?

DESMOND-HELLMANN: Exactly. Setting the long-term agenda.

FORTUNE: Melinda, what has changed since I profiled you in Fortune in January 2008?

GATES: We were working in family planning in a very small way back then, but we certainly were not at all vociferous. And we hadn't tried to galvanize partners to say this is incredibly important for the world. You have to allow a woman to have a family planning tool, to plan and space the births of her children. And so, we've come out very strongly as a Foundation about that. I think a lot of it has to do with what Bill and I have seen as we've traveled. It's the women who carry so much of the work in Africa.

Regarding family planning, what's your goal around this mission that you announced in 2012?

GATES: The goal was to give 120 million new women access to contraceptives. So we galvanized a set of partners. The U.K. government made significant commitments, as did a number of host countries. We've garnered resources to the tune of $2.6 billion to say we will insure that we can get contraceptives to 120 million women. We've had seven nations come forward with plans. Niger, for example, has the highest fertility rate in the world, and they couldn't get resources before. Now there's a structure for that.

Sue, are you going to be an external face of the Foundation, along with Melinda and Bill?

DESMOND-HELLMANN: A fair amount of any leaders' job is "get stuff done." I really like being a manager. I like thinking about what brings out the best in all these talented people who have come to work at the Foundation. And I love the use of metrics. And so particularly early on, I'll spend a lot of time on that. I'm not expected to be on the stump.

GATES: We do a survey every year of our own internal culture and what people say about their own manager, their own department. We have work to do. And Sue loves to do that work and roll up her sleeves. That was highly attractive to us.

DESMOND-HELLMANN: I'm a really simple thinker when it comes to things like this. I want to be able to effectively connect all that intellect, competence and passion to impact as efficiently as possible. People I admire do that well, and they do that over and over again. The second piece of that is, people feel exhilarated by the challenge, not overwhelmed. I like it when the hairs are up on the back of my neck. But then I take a bike ride when I get home. And they go back down. You know what I mean? I don't think that talented people want to work on easy things.

Melinda, what does the Gates Foundation need to do better?

GATES: I think we can be more efficient internally. Sometimes we’ll have too many people weigh in on a decision. So we’re a little bureaucratic in places. I think Sue will help us sort through some of that.

Sue, did you talk to Warren Buffett about this job?

DESMOND-HELLMANN: Not when I was deciding to take the job, no.

GATES: But he knew very early that Sue was a candidate. I called and talked to him about that.

DESMOND-HELLMANN: We had actually met at the [Fortune Most Powerful] Women Summit, although he's not a biotech investor, he told me. (Laughter) He doesn't understand it.

GATES: Warren gave us advice before: "Make sure whoever you hire gets the best out of both of you, individually and together." And his advice was the same this time when I called him. He said, "This is your and Bill's decision, Melinda."

Sue, you've gone from Genentech to UCSF to the Gates Foundation, and now you're on the P&G and Facebook boards. Is there a career strategy here?

DESMOND-HELLMANN: I do have a philosophy. When I worked in Uganda, it was a couple of years after I joined the faculty at UC San Francisco. I was on a typical career path, and going to Uganda was a massive change in my world view. When I came back, I focused on how could I be useful? So every role I've had since then has two things in common. One is that I feel like the work is meaningful and I can help people who are sick or I can help them have a productive life. And the second thing is that my skill set can add value. And as my roles have changed and I've had the opportunity to be a leader, first at Bristol-Myers Squibb and then at Genentech and then at UCSF, I sort of raised the bar for myself. Is there a unique way I can make a contribution?

GATES: I haven't heard all of that.

I could imagine Sue telling you that as you were considering the candidates.

GATES: She wasn't ever in sales mode.

Early on, did you think you might not get Sue?

GATES: Absolutely, and even late in the process I thought you might not come. We had a couple of late nights.

What was the block?

GATES: I knew she believed in the mission. But she was so passionate about what she was currently doing. She couldn't see over the wall to see "how can I give up this thing that I'm dedicated to right now."

DESMOND-HELLMANN: So the three of us were on the phone late one Sunday night, and I kept think about all these wonderful things that I was working on with my colleagues at UCSF. I mean, brain science and children, and we just did a transaction with Children's Hospital of Oakland to have a really important Children's Hospital that's going to help a lot of poor kids and families who are suffering. And Bill and Melinda in turn talked a little bit about the hopes and dreams for the Foundation. I asked you something like "What are you hoping for in the next 5 to 10 years," and each of them articulated.

Okay, we've got to go there.

DESMOND-HELLMANN: I remember so well. Melinda talked about what life was like for women and girls. And Bill talked about polio eradication and solving diseases and bringing vaccines. It was the first time that I got to really hear the passion and the scope of what they were doing, and it's an opportunity to change the world. I stopped chewing myself out about not living up to being chancellor. And it was like, OK, I could leave this because this is so super special. And then I was done.

GATES: Bill’s No. 1 thing that he spends time on is polio, and the No. 1 one thing I spend my time on is family planning. We love everything else. Don’t get me wrong. But that’s how we oriented our lives. I think what you heard that night is just how deeply we’re living this mission. It’s not just a job we go to every day. We’ve had to really juggle our whole family’s lives and calendars around this to make it all work. And that’s what we’re doing because we think it’s the right thing for the world.

DESMOND-HELLMANN: I don’t know that the outside world is clear on that. How amazing it is for two people who are this talented and who could do a bunch of different things with their time and energy and resources, how extraordinary that is, and how real. If I could help, I would be happy.